If you think about it in terms of Occam’s razor, what is the better explanation? That most people lied about their IQ, and fudged their SAT, ACT and personality type data to match, or that they’re telling the truth?
I’m inclined to believe the survey results myself, but there is a third possibility. If a certain personality type (or distribution of types) reflects a desire to associate with gifted people, or to be seen as gifted, we’d likely expect that to be heavily overrepresented in MENSA; that’s pretty much the reason the club exists, after all. We might also expect people with those desires to be less inclined to share average or poor IQ results, or even to falsify results.
If the same personality type is overrepresented here, then we have a plausible cause for similar personality test results and for exaggerated IQ reporting, without necessarily implying that the actual IQ distributions are similar.
I’m inclined to believe the survey results myself, but there is a third possibility. If a certain personality type (or distribution of types) reflects a desire to associate with gifted people, or to be seen as gifted, we’d likely expect that to be heavily overrepresented in MENSA; that’s pretty much the reason the club exists, after all. We might also expect people with those desires to be less inclined to share average or poor IQ results, or even to falsify results.
If the same personality type is overrepresented here, then we have a plausible cause for similar personality test results and for exaggerated IQ reporting, without necessarily implying that the actual IQ distributions are similar.